


After 02x11 (the Bottle Job)

by PseudoLeigha



Series: (More) 2AM Conversations [25]
Category: Leverage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-17
Updated: 2016-04-17
Packaged: 2018-06-02 16:49:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6574216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PseudoLeigha/pseuds/PseudoLeigha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Parker talks to Sophie about Nate's drinking. Take II</p>
            </blockquote>





	After 02x11 (the Bottle Job)

‘Giselle’ wandered silently through a nearly empty sculpture gallery. In two hours, the GNAM would be packed with tourists, but now it was quiet, and perfect for contemplating the artists’ work as well as her own life.

Well, it would be perfect, if not for the obnoxiously persistent guard following her around and desperately trying to convince her to join him for coffee after his shift ended. There was a time and a place for such things, and when she was otherwise occupied appreciating Manzú’s bronzes was not that time.

The mobile that Hardison had kindly (albeit slightly stalkerishly) sent her after she destroyed the last one – the one which the team all had the number for, in case of an emergency – chimed brightly. Giselle, who was thankful for an excuse to leave the guard behind, was instantly replaced by Sophie, and her concern that Hardison had been kidnapped by Russians again, or Tara had finally had it with Nate’s antics and was leaving the team for good. She made her way toward the museum’s main entrance as she answered. 

“Pronto.”

“Sophie?” Parker sounded almost… sad? Disappointed, maybe? She was hard to read face-to-face, let alone over the phone.

“Parker? What’s wrong?” It was always slightly worrisome to get a call on the Emergency Mobile (lately they had been using Skype instead), but coming from an emotional Parker, it was doubly disturbing.

“Couldn’t sleep.” Boston was only six hours behind Rome. Quite frankly, Sophie was a bit surprised that Parker had even been trying to sleep. It was, after all, the middle of the night there.

“Why not?” she asked patiently, vaguely relieved that it wasn’t, apparently, a matter of life and death.

“McRory died.”

“McRory? The pub?” Had they burnt it down?

“The owner. His wake was today, and this loan shark came by trying to collect, and Nate was all like, _no, you’re not taking the bar from Cora, she’s like a niece to me,_ and then we ran the Wire in under an hour, and then Nate said we had to put a spike in him or he’d come back and we’d never get rid of him, so we rigged a poker game with a buncha cops an’ got him arrested an’ stole all his money an’ gave it back to the people he loan-sharked.”

“Um… okay?” _They ran the Wire_ in an hour? _How is that even_ possible? Sophie wondered. “And that’s why you can’t sleep?” Talking to Parker always left her feeling like she was missing something, but in this case she suspected much had been left out, because it _sounded_ like a successful night’s work.

“No.” The thief sounded bloody _miserable._

“ _Parker_ ,” Sophie said sternly, “If you don’t tell me what’s wrong, I can’t help you.”

There was a burst of static as the younger woman sighed too close to the phone. “Nate’s drunk. He’s drinking again. Since tonight. And you’re not here, and Tara’s not you, and he doesn’t listen to anyone else.”

“Oh, Parker,” she couldn’t help but sigh herself. It was probably true that Nate wouldn’t listen to ‘the kids’ as he privately referred to their younger team-members, but none of the three of them would confront him about it directly in the first place. Hardison _thrived_ on pulling off whatever impossible task Nate drunkenly demanded of him; Eliot saw him, she was pretty sure, as his commanding officer, and wouldn’t go against him until he actually made a fatal mistake; and Parker… she still wasn’t sure what had happened to Parker growing up, but whatever it was, it had clearly inclined her to avoidance rather than confrontation in this situation.

“He was giving away our money again, Sophie, like before rehab. You have to talk to him again.”

 _God_ fucking _damn it, Nate!_ she raged silently. “I will,” she said grimly. _And_ she would talk to Tara about giving her a heads-up if he started getting out-of-control reckless. The other grifter was the only one of the four she could trust _not_ to trust Nate right over the side of a cliff. “And,” she added, in a flash of inspiration, “you know you can always tell Eliot if the drinking is bothering you.”

“You said Eliot doesn’t think Nate has a problem.”

“When did I say that?”

“When I said we should break him and you said we couldn’t and I said Eliot would help and you said he thought Nate was coping.”

 _Oh, that conversation…_ “That was when he was sober,” she pointed out. “Eliot will see his drinking again as evidence that he’s _not_ coping. He probably won’t say anything on his own, but if he knows it’s making you uncomfortable, he would.”

“Oh… Um… why?”

Sophie smiled, vaguely amused by the fact that Parker still, after almost a year and a half with the team (not counting their six-month hiatus), didn’t understand that the others cared about her and her welfare. She wondered if she ever would. “Because it’s his job to protect you.”

“I thought it was his job to protect Nate. And Hardison, I guess.”

“What? Why only them?”

There was a hint of exasperation in the explanation: “Nate’s not a thief, so he needs someone to watch his back when he’s talking to a mark. And Hardison’s… Hardison. He gets in trouble every time he leaves Lucille.”

“What about you? Or me? Or Tara?”

“ _You_ are in Italy, and _I_ can take care of myself,” was the matter-of-fact response, followed by a reluctant, “and so can Tara, I guess.”

Sophie sniggered at the lingering hint of antipathy toward her replacement, and made a mental note to warn the other woman that Parker still hadn’t completely accepted her, despite expressing what Tara had thought was a positive emotion in her direction. “Eliot thinks it’s his job to protect _everyone_ on the team, including you, Parker. And if you ask him, that will include against Nate’s drinking.”

“Are you sure?” the girl asked in a small voice.

“Yes. I’m positive.”

“Okay. Thanks, Sophie.”

“You’re welcome, Parker.”

The thief rang off before Sophie could say anything else, which she supposed meant that Parker had gotten everything she wanted out of the conversation. The grifter sighed and headed for the nearest café. Babysitting the team from a distance was _much_ harder than doing so from the same city, but it was worth it.

She thought she was finally starting to come to terms with the fact that she had (somehow, inexplicably, and so slowly she hadn’t noticed it happening) _changed_ from the hot-headed, impetuous young grifter she had once been. Now, she found, she was _lonely_ , longing for Hardison’s wit, Parker’s off-beat observations, Eliot’s solidly reassuring presence, and the audience that Parker had pointed out Nate effortlessly provided. Conning people for the sake of it didn’t hold the same appeal it once had, and she found herself stopping more often to smell the metaphorical roses. And despite the fact that she had left them half a world away, she still felt _responsible_ for the team and their welfare.

Maybe, she thought with a tiny shudder, this was what people meant when they talked about growing up.

**Author's Note:**

> The GNAM is the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome. According to like five minutes' googling, Manzu does have some works there, and 'pronto' is the standard answering-the-phone greeting in Italian. But I don't actually speak Italian, and I've never been to Rome, so if I'm wrong, please let me know, and I'll make adjustments accordingly.


End file.
